Mitch McConnell reveals fall led to hospitalization after weeks of silence

Senator says in statement he has undergone battery of tests after weeks of mounting speculation about his health

The US senator Mitch McConnell on Sunday revealed for the first time that a fall led to his hospitalization, breaking the silence about the Kentucky Republican’s condition after weeks of mounting speculation about his health.

McConnell, 84, said in a statement that he has undergone a battery of tests as doctors try to determine what led to his fall. He explained the long silence about his condition by saying that “folks of my generation often hesitate to share the vulnerability that comes with growing older”.

“Even in the public eye, I feel that same instinct – I can’t help it,” he said.

McConnell said he is now in a rehabilitation center and will not be returning to the Senate “quite yet”. He said he continues to work with his staff on Senate business in the meantime.

The statement included a smiling picture of McConnell with his wife, Elaine Chao, a tacit response to speculation online that he had died or was incapacitated. McConnell held a copy of Sunday’s Washington Post sports section in his hand.

Sunday’s statement came after his hospitalization on 14 June. McConnell’s office for weeks provided little information, insisting only that he was “receiving excellent care” and recovering.

As his hospital stay grew longer, speculation mounted about his condition. It grew so intense that Kentucky’s Democratic governor, Andy Beshear, took the extraordinary step of asking that McConnell update the public about his health in a “transparent manner”.

“I’ve submitted to every test they can think of to help figure out what caused this incident,” McConnell said in the new statement, without revealing any answer, only what had been ruled out. “My doctors have confirmed that I didn’t break any bones or suffer a concussion. I didn’t have a heart attack or a stroke. I don’t have any tumors or hemorrhages. But I was briefly unconscious and was taken to the hospital,” McConnell said. While hospitalized, he added, “I’ve also had to deal with a mild case of pneumonia.”

McConnell’s statement also came after the unexpected death of Lindsey Graham , his fellow Republican US senator, on Saturday evening. Graham’s office on Sunday told reporters that the 71-year-old South Carolina senator died of an aortic dissection – a break in the main artery carrying blood from the heart, caused by arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease, which causes a gradual weakening and hardening of arteries.

Before McConnell’s office released his statement, one of his colleagues, the Democratic senator Cory Booker, offered his “thoughts and prayers” to the former Republican majority leader, but added: “This is just unfortunately an issue of politics in general: people don’t know when to gracefully step aside.”